1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a terminal and method for iris scanning and proximity sensing, and more particularly, to a terminal capable of increasing the iris scanning rate by sharing light emitting illumination needed for proximity sensing and light emitting illumination needed for iris scanning, and a method of iris scanning and proximity sensing.
2. Description of the Related Art
Iris scanning is used to collect information of characteristics of respective attributes of irises of people and use the information in authentication technology for security. The iris has unique patterns whose number is larger than that of the fingerprint. Further, iris scanning is a non-contact type of scanning and authentication, and thus people do not feel uncomfortable with the iris scanning. In addition, a person may be accurately identified even if the person wears eyeglasses or contact lenses. Moreover, iris scanning usually takes less than two seconds, and thus iris scanning is being evaluated as a biometric identification technology more advanced than a fingerprint or retina scanning technology.
Further, as a terminal, such as a portable terminal, a mobile device, a cell phone, or other electronic devices, gets rapidly sophisticated, the amount of information stored in the terminal increases, the importance of information is on the increase, and a security technology applied to the terminal is also getting sophisticated. As described above, iris scanning is a technology more advanced than a fingerprint or retina scanning technology in terms of the accuracy and speed, and scanning without contact is possible using a camera. Hence, if iris scanning is applied to the terminal, the security of the terminal may be more strengthened, and the terminal may provide various services related with authentication to user.
However, despite all such advantages, iris scanning is not being widely applied to terminals in Korea and elsewhere. This is partly because of the costs of iris scanning technology in the prior art, but is also because of the scanning rate problem. In the case of the prior art which applies iris scanning, a terminal uses a flash built in for photographing as illumination for iris scanning. In the case of some people, such as non-Asians, iris scanning is possible only using a general flash as illumination. However, in the case of other people, including Asian people, many Asians do not have sufficient melanin pigments in their eyes, and thus infrared rays need to be stably secured. As a result, an illuminator of infrared rays needs to be separately installed to increase the iris scanning rate. However, having a separate built-in infrared ray illumination for iris scanning would make it difficult for the terminal to be lighter and smaller.